Q&A: Is There Proof for the Pharisaic Approach?
Is There Proof for the Pharisaic Approach?
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I give talks on faith to teenagers, and my question is this:
Suppose that from a logical standpoint it is reasonable to speak about a “proof” for the Creator of the world, if we follow the approach of those who derive this from creation itself and its order; and suppose that from the complexity of creation I can infer that creation has meaning (just as human creations, which are less complex, have meaning); and suppose that it stands to reason that this Creator of the world—if He already “went to so much effort”—would also reveal His will to the human beings He created and not leave them blind in the dark; and suppose that the listener will also accept the Torah as the original document given by the Creator of the world in order to reveal His view, on the basis of the revelation at Mount Sinai and other unique features of the Torah—
all of the above, I believe, any fair-minded and intellectually honest person can accept on the basis of reason—
but the difficulty comes more when it comes to implementing the Torah. That is, the student asks: can it be proven, and if so how, that the Pharisaic-rabbinic way of interpreting the Torah is the correct one? After all, among the Jewish people there were also Sadducees and other sects. Is the very fact that they disappeared proof that they did not really know how to interpret God’s will?
Did those sects have any criterion that showed they were mistaken? (I assume they believed in the rightness of their path of Torah interpretation at the time they were active.)
Was there something they failed to notice, or is it only the very survival of the Pharisees and their devotion to the Torah that proves the correctness of their way?
And even after the long process one goes through in order to accept the Pharisaic interpretation of the Torah, the questioner / newly religious person will still have a hard time when confronting real-life questions. For example, military service in the IDF—some rabbis will say it is a commandment, some will say it is optional, and some will say it is something one must die rather than transgress, and all of them are Orthodox. So how is a person supposed to find his way? As for me, I answer the last question by saying that a person must examine every question with his own mind according to the Oral Torah he has learned. But clearly, for someone looking from the outside, this “really doesn’t look good,” and it seems to return the whole interpretation of the Torah to his personal reasoning and judgment. If so, what is the value of the interpretive tradition?
Sorry for the length, and thank you.
Answer
I do not know how to prove such a thing. The question is what your basic assumptions are. If the Torah is meant to be transmitted through tradition and interpreted by us (after all, it was not given in final, explicit form), then apparently the Torah and the Giver of the Torah assume that this is indeed what will happen. According to this, the interpretations that were given and are given to the Torah are an integral part of it, and therefore there is also no problem at all with disputes that arise on various issues. The Holy One, blessed be He, gave the Torah on the understanding that we would act according to how we understand it.
A tradition was passed down to us that together with the Torah, methods of exposition and interpretation were also given, as well as laws given to Moses at Sinai. The Karaites and the Sadducees did not accept this tradition, just as people today do not accept it. This was not an interpretive disagreement or a disagreement about methods of interpretation, but about the reliability of the tradition. Therefore nowadays too, if you accept this tradition, then you accept it, and if not, then not—just as one can discuss the tradition of the giving of the Torah itself.
So what is a person supposed to do when faced with differing opinions? Decide for himself. Either on the merits of the issue itself, or, if he is not capable of that, to “make for himself a rabbi,” meaning: choose the person who seems closest to his outlook and follow him. There is no need at all to worry that maybe you are mistaken and another opinion is correct, because, as stated, the Torah was given on the understanding that it would contain many opinions and that people would decide based on their own judgment. That itself is apparently what God wanted, and the Holy One, blessed be He, does not make unfair demands of His creatures. If you decided according to the best of your understanding, then you did what you could—and that is it.
Discussion on Answer
In my estimation, that is what happened (that is how I understand the tradition we received). But a different way of thinking does not necessarily undermine the obligation to obey. Still, without having received the methods of exposition, they seem far too arbitrary, and it is hard to commit oneself to caprices of that sort (of course, one can formally say that we accepted these crazinesses upon ourselves, and that’s that).
Why caprices and crazinesses? Scholars argue that this was the accepted Greek methodology for analyzing texts, as explained in the book Greek in Jewish Palestine by Professor Lieberman, among others.
Beyond that, one could say that there was an integration here between the methods of exposition and the halakhic tradition, similar to your own suggestion.
At first, they find a connection between a basic and familiar method of exposition (from Greek wisdom) and a known Jewish law from the tradition. Later, they see that a certain other law will fit the exposition only if we refine it—for example, by adding a qualification to an a fortiori inference, namely the rule that “it is enough” to limit the inference.
Or for example, a conceptual dispute among sages causes one of them to qualify the interpretive principles—for example, that one says “limitation-amplification-limitation” and not “generalization-detail-generalization.”
In this way, the methods of exposition enrich Jewish law, and Jewish law enriches the interpretive principles, so that each develops in its own way in integration with the other.
What is the problem with this proposal? It makes it unnecessary to assume that the methods of exposition came down from Sinai.
Lieberman’s thesis seems very dubious to me. He brings a few isolated examples, and no real structure can be built on them. Even if there are such examples, the connection between them and everything that was actually done in the literature of the sages is extremely tenuous. That is why I wrote that this interpretation seems detached and implausible, and if people invented all this, then it is hard to demand commitment to this collection of inventions (unless you adopt extreme formalism).
I’ve come across your formulation several times regarding the methods of exposition (“three thousand laws were forgotten during the mourning for Moses, and Othniel son of Kenaz restored them through his dialectical reasoning,” etc.).
I wanted to understand why it is important to you to claim that the core of the methods of exposition was given at Sinai.
Suppose the Torah was transmitted without any defined methods of exposition at all, but was given in order that in each generation the sages would derive from it, using their philological tools and hermeneutics, the practical applications for daily life.
Now, just as they drew conclusions regarding various facts from the wisdom of their own era, they also drew their methodological tools from that same era (like a priori thinking versus empirical thinking). Why shouldn’t we say that they drew the methods of exposition from that same place as well (as scholars maintain)?
I’m not asking what actually happened; if you claim that historically this is clearly what happened, I’ll accept that. My question is whether a different understanding undermines the obligation to obey their words.